Welcome to the Roman Baths Blog!

Wednesday, 27 August 2014

I’m Christopher, a recent Textile Design Graduate of Bath School
of Art and Design, and Ancient Textile Researcher who is a regular volunteer.
During the past two years here at the Roman Baths, the building and its
collection has provided a wonderful wealth of inspiration for my work.

I am a keen student of both history and design, constantly
looking for ways to combine the two subjects coherently; with the help of the
Roman Baths I have successfully discovered my niche as an Ancient Textile
Researcher. During the final year of my degree, the ‘Developing Textile design’
module gave me the opportunity to produce a collection of woven textile samples
inspired by Roman mosaics.

Woven sample based on Mosaics

Using a variety of different mosaics, to explore the geometric
patterns of Roman mosaics, to develop a series of ‘colour and weave’ patterns
to weave cloth samples. The mosaics include two from the Roman Baths
collection, the geometric mosaic floor from Weymouth House, Bath and the mosaic
from the Keynsham Roman Villa.

Exploring Geometric patterns: the Weymouth House mosaic, now in store

Through a series of observational drawing I broke down the
mosaics into re-occurring patterns, developing them into repeatable weave
blocks to weave the samples.

Observational drawing of the mosaic

Preparing for my Graduate Show, I returned to the Roman Baths
again, this time taking a series of photographs of the exterior of the
building, while there was scaffolding all over the building to do maintenance
of the Pump Room roof. I used the juxtaposition of the scaffolding over the
windows and columns of the building, to create a series of tartans and checks.
This was done by breaking them down into blocks of colour and lines created by
the overlaying features of the building.

Breaking down images into colour and lines

Alongside the module I experimented with natural dyes, to
discover the effect of dyeing natural coloured wool on the depth of colour
produced during the dye process. Trying to keep to similar colours to what
would have been available to the Romans; therefore I used Madder (Rubia
Tinctorum), Weld (Reseda Luteola) and Indigo (Indigofera
Tintoria).

NB. Even the chalk used in the dye process, is from the Baths
(used in conservation, as sacrificial mortaring in the pavement around the
Great bath.)

Natural Dye Experiments

The module concluded with the presentation of my work in the
Textile Design Degree Show at Bath School of Art and Design in June 2014, where
I created a gallery space, that combined aspects of research and design.

Final Degree Show

Samples from Final Degree Show

To see more of my textile design work and/or my ancient textile
research, you can find me on my blog: Christopherleedesigns.wordpress.com

Monday, 25 August 2014

Beyond the most familiar use, can you imagine in which
way can a coin be used? It can be used, for example, to illustrate history.

During the Roman Empire coins were a means of propaganda
and celebration of dynasties as well. Roman Emperors had always used coins to
promote themselves, representing their victories and their relatives also
through symbolism.

For my Money Monday handling table I chose to use coins from the Beau Street Hoard to look at Lucius
Septimius Severus who achieved
several victories during his reign. One of the most important ones was against
the Parthian Empire, the archenemy of the Roman Empire for centuries. This
achievement was so important for the Empire and for Severus' dynasty that, in
order to celebrate this big happening, a monumental triumphal arch was built in
the Roman Forum in Rome and several celebratory coins were minted all over the
Empire. Some of these represented the Parthian victory and the greatness of
Roman Empire containing some well-known symbols to deliver the message.

The Winged Victory

The Nike (the
winged Victory) symbolized the good result in a war or campaign as well as some
Goddesses such as Minerva which was the Goddess of Strategy.

Minerva,
the Goddess of strategy

Severus was one of the Roman Emperors declared by the
army. This element of his personal story is also present in the coinage of his
age. The number of coins minted under his reign was increased because of some
reforms to improve the military life. In fact, he promised to his loyal legions
an increase in salary and a better quality of life. For this reason a greater production of coins was needed. The symbolism related to the army was
on several of these coins.

Eagle with open wings, symbol of Roman Army

Another key-element of coinage of Severus was his desire to make and promote his imperial dynasty as one of the most ancient ones. He
celebrated his sons, Geta and Caracalla, and his second wife, Julia Domna.

Julia Domna, as a Roman woman and an Emperor’s wife, was represented as Roman Goddesses such as Venus, Juno, and Diana, but also as Pietas and Pudicitia, the
deifications of important values such as chastity and respect for gods, nation
and family.

Julia
Domna as Pudicitia

Coins can be read as a book focusing on someone’s life,
where the obverse is the title and the reverse is the chapter, condensed in one
meaningful and allegoric image.

Wednesday, 20 August 2014

One of the activities in the Heritage Lottery funded Beau
Street Hoard Project is photography of the hoard, by members of local U3A
groups.

In order that the coins can be identified, they are first
being accessioned in to the Roman Baths Museum collection. This includes
individually packing each coin identified by the British Museum, and assigning
it a unique number. As every one of the 17,577 coins in the hoard need an
individual number, this is a somewhat daunting task, currently being carried
out by a wide range of our collections volunteers (all 13 of them) and
placements.

All 775 coins from Bag 5 individually numbered and stored

Once individually packed and numbered, the next stage in the
process is the photography and weighing of the coins. It is for this stage of
work, which we have enlisted the help of U3A volunteers.

U3A volunteers photographing and weighing the coins

In teams of three, they are photographing the coins;
including the accession number, for identification purposes, the obverse
(heads) side, and the reverse (tails) side. Along the way they are having, to
get used to identifying the images on either side of the coin, so that each
photograph accurately displays the coin.

Three images are taken for every coin

Once photographed, they are also weighing the coins, the
recording of this information being crucial to identifying coins.

To date, 3229 coins have been photographed and weighed. This
includes the entirety of Bags 5, 6, 7 and 8. The contents of these four bags are
a good representation of coins from the hoard, denarii, radiates and debased
radiates.

Bags 5 and 6 are the best examples of silver coins from the
hoard, so they were nice coins to get the U3A started on, however, it wasn’t
long before they had to move on to doing the considerably less shiny coins from
Bags 7 and 8, and they are doing a sterling job in photography what are some rather
nasty coins.

Some rather nasty coins from Bag 7

The rate at which the coins are being photographed and the
speed at which the U3A volunteers are learning to recognise the reverses of
coins has been unprecedented, and so work on Bag 2 has already started while we
have other volunteers working through getting the rest of it numbered.

Bag 2 all bagged up and waiting to be numbered

With work soon to recommence on getting the rest of the
hoard identified at the British Museum, it hopefully won’t be long until we are
working our way through the rest of the hoard too!

Monday, 18 August 2014

Money Mondays
is one of many regular events that occur at the Roman Baths and are included in
the wider Roman Baths Museum. This event particularly focuses on a different
aspect of money each Monday.

For my individual
display, I chose to focus my attention to the Gods, Goddesses and Heroes who
are depicted on Roman coinage. I realised I would be able to intertwine with The
Beau Street Coin Hoard which the Roman Baths are currently cleaning (with the
British Museum), recording, cataloguing, storing and displaying.

I wanted to exhibit
selected deities found on a small number of the coins. This was done through an
informative display and pairing activity. There was also opportunity to observe
the coins through a magnifying glass.

The display
involved a lot of background preparation:

1.The selection
of visually appropriate coins from the hoard.

2.Creation of
the correct display packaging for each coin.

3.Extensive
background research, making sure all the information was relevant and
accessible.

4. Writing the
information displays in such a way that they had enough detailed information to
educate people who were interested but they were easy to read for both English
and Non-English speaking people.

5. The display
had to be prepared in such a way as to be aesthetically pleasing as well as
being informative and easy to understand.

6. Ensuring all
the correct materials and equipment were at the right place at the right time
in accordance with the event times.

1

Discussing
the detail on the coins

After the
Event

The event was
very successful, even though it was a fairly quiet evening, nearing 100 people
came up to the display between 6pm - 8pm and actively engaged in conversation
about the display and about the coin hoard and its current story.

It was a
massive learning curve for me to see how displays and exhibitions are put
together from the very beginning and just how much time and effort needs to go
into them in order to make people engage and provide opportunities for them.

There were defiantly
areas for improvement on the display, which were only realized once the display
was setup (such as font/paragraph size and the grouping of texts and images).

Wednesday, 13 August 2014

Working with the Beau Street Hoard means that Roman coins
are never at a shortage. So when I was asked to put together a display and
activity for Money Mondays I decided to expand the time range up to the time of
Elizabeth I, the last in the Tudor dynasty.

Of course coins from the Beau St Hoard still made an
appearance and alongside the coins of Hadrian, Severus Alexander and Gordian
III were coins of Henry I, Henry II, Henry VIII and as mentioned, Elizabeth I.
I have always had an interest in Middle Age and Tudor history and this was the
perfect opportunity for me to find out more about its coinage, mints and
moneyers.

In regards to the activity I chose to do a matching
exercise, matching the coin to a description of its ruling Emperor, King or
Queen, such as facts and clues to their appearance, character or details of
coin production at the time.

I provided a label for each coin, describing its obverse and
reverse along with its legend and production date if applicable. As a final
activity I collected images of each of the 7 leaders, with the idea to match
the coin to its leader using the coin labels and descriptions.

Money Monday table with the coins and their labels

The display did prove quite popular; a good few people took
a keen interest to the coins, picking them up and examining then intently and
listening while we fed them information about the hoard as well. I was assisted
by Katie who was able to answer the questions I couldn’t and both of us put
together were able to talk our way around it in the end! It was a great fun to
put together and host, and I gained new knowledge in doing so and hope that
those who took an interest did to. I
don’t think there could have been a better place to have done it either - the Great
Bath of an evening provides the best backdrop!

Tuesday, 12 August 2014

May drew to a close, and with that my placement here
at the Roman Baths also did. I honestly can’t believe that it’s been 9 months
since I began working here with the collections team. I’ve had so many
experiences and learning curbs and memories that will remain with me. I can’t
list them all in this post so I’m going to list my top four.

Toga Party – one of the volunteers on the collections team
hosted her birthday at the roman baths in the form of a toga party. The
experience was beyond surreal, walking around the site dressed in full roman
garb whilst dancing to 70s disco in the ticket hall that had been transformed
into a club complete with flashing lights with the ticket station acting as a
bar for the evening! We danced to night away, with me even having to remove my
authentic Roman lady’s veil or palla
to keep cool.

Me and Caroline dressed as Romans with the water organ

Museums at night – On
the night of Party in the City the Roman Baths opened up to the public till
late and had several musical acts such as a swing band around the Great Bath, a
lyre player by the temple pediment and our own personal pride - a replica of a roman water organ built by the
wonderful Richard Ellam. A few of us dressed up as Romans and helped with the
playing of the organ and talking to the public about it. The event was so much
fun and it felt really good to have followed the creation of the organ through
from the conception of the idea to the construction and then its premiere to
the public.

Me Looking at the collection

Handling collection – Throughout this placement, the fact
that I’ve had the chance to see many objects from the Roman Baths collection
not on display and be able view them up close is a privilege not lost on me. I
can’t believe how lucky I am! To name one particular piece: A real Viking
sword!!

Just a few of the lovely people I worked with!

People – Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz saying that she’ll
miss Scarecrow most of all, the thing I’ll miss most about my time here will be
the people I’ve worked with who were all so welcoming when I began and really
came be good friends now I’m leaving. But it’s not goodbye but more of a “see
you later”!

With that I’ll wrap this up! Thank you to anyone who read
any of my blog posts! I’ve loved writing them!

Emma

Sorry for late posting Emma! our excuse is more of our computers refusing to work with our blog!Verity & Susan

The Roman Baths at Night

The Roman Baths Bloggers

We are the volunteers, interns and employees of the Roman Baths. We started this blog to provide you with a behind the scenes glimpse of what goes on here at the Roman Baths. We will be writing about what is interesting and important to us from collections to activities and events.